In the building's centre between the long
silo blocks is
a windowed 3-bay 'tower' capped
with a huge wooden 'pyramid' - its impressive scale reduced by
whimsical dormers and crenellated balustrades.
Its principal mechanical function was vertical grain transport
via bucket-conveyors from the Hall at its base to its "Pyramid"
head-house, from which, via its great central attic the "Museum", it
was sent to various parts of the building for processing, storage, or discharge.

The tower
houses a long sequence of narrow wooden strangely domestic stairs (like a 19C
tenement-block) - this 'Central-Stair' is the only common
route from Ground to Attics. It serves three levels of conventional rooms
(director's office, company admin-office, the lab and grain-factor's office);
these, the only part of the Silo designed primarily for human functioning and already supplied with electricity/water/gas, were the first
locations that the present squatters occupied; (they had previously been occupied by site-owner-invited
'anti-squatters', who had vacated the building). Above these admin levels the stair re-enters the industrial domain: on
landing L-4 the 'domestic-style' stair ends and one must enter a door into part
of an
erstwhile grain weighing area - now a small steel-girt 'lobby' containing the strange
twisted stair-flight up to the Silo's grain-distribution hall, now the "Museum".

The
central 'tower' between the silo-storage wings contains the Silo's only
common vertical route: the ' Central-Stair' which, until the last commercial
use in 1987, served the company offices and lab (windowed levels 1/2/3),
which, already 'semi- domesticated', were sites of the Silo's first
live-in occupation.

This
east facade reveals the following:

L0:
the Central Hall - to the left of its three windows the unassuming little
'domestic-scale' Central-Stair begins its journey up the Central 'tower'.

L1: FROUJKE
and DIDERIK's apt is the erstwhile Silo director's
and secretary's
office. It overlooks the Ij and the Silo's quay through an incongruously 'homely' bay-
window.

L5:
the "Museum" - the
great central attic via which grain, bucket-elevated
from the Hall to its "Pyramid" 'head-house', was distributed to the
silo-filling conveyors of the North and South Attics.

SILO'S CENTRAL 'TOWER': W FACADE
(pic-crop
9-94 / to W)

This
west facade reveals the following:

L0:
The central Hall, accessed from the fronting dijk.

L1:
Under and behind the
Slurf (which projects from the facade between levels 1 and 2) is a former ?bagging
hall, converted in c1994 into
the Silo's public art gallery, reached from the public dijk up an external wooden stair.
To its right is the window of a tiny room (the temporary home
of Sasha [not recorded]).

L2:
RUUDs apt (which extends a garden-terrace onto the top of the Slurf).

The
'Slurf' (proboscis or "elephant trunk")
housed a conveyor that filled Houthaven-moored barges. It projects from the
facade between levels
1 and L2 - just
below Ruud's L2 apt (he has used it as an exterior
extension of his living room, making a terrace and garden at its east end).

.

the
CENTRAL STAIR AND ITS APTS

.CLIMBING
THE STAIR ...

Starting
the 22m climb from the rear of the Hall of bikes to the "Pyramid"
crowned "Museum", one looks up the stair-welI's
narrow central slot threaded with water pipe, strung with bunched telephone
cables (fused together in a recent fire, dribbling plastic and flashing strands
of copper - but still working!), punctuated on each landing with the red drum of
a fire-hose.

CENTRAL
STAIR: L0: ENTRY AT REAR OF HALL
(pic
6-94 / to E)

CENTRAL
STAIR: L1: VIEW UP TO LANDING L-4
(pic
6-94 / to E)

.

CLIMBING
THE STAIR ... cont ...

On
the next three levels the atmosphere of 'offices' has been subtly skewed to
'apartment-house' by debris of domesticity: pinned photos, dying plants,
shower-steam, beer bottles. The change starts on landing L-1 where a
shower and wc face a glazed door
that reveals what appears to be an ordinary home hallway - a strange surprise: a
family flat.

CENTRAL
STAIR: L1 LANDING WC & SHOWER
(pic
9-94 / to S)

On
landing 1, opposite the front-door of Froujke's and Diderik's apt is a wc
and shower. A shared
facility that they use as the bathroom of their
apt.

CENTRAL
STAIR: L1 WEST - ART GALLERY
(pic
9-94 / to EEN)

A
large chamber on the west side of the tower - housed the lower-end of the
vertical conveyor (parts of the conveyor are at the rear of the room). Entered
from the Central Stair landing 1 (door far right-corner), and from the Dijk up large wooden stairs
under the Slurf, and via its loading-platform.
Sometimes open to
the public [Ref: SILO PUBLIC-ART]

.

FROUJKE
K & DIDERIK M APT (19## - ) [L1 - E-side]

A
family home established at the start of the squat. The ordinary rooms of these
offices were easily adapted into homes; this was the Silo company Director's and
boasts a house-type bay window overlooking Het Ij - incongruously
projecting from the Silo's facade as if a suburban house was engulfed within the
building.

FROUJKE APT: ENTRY HALL
(pic 6-94 / to NNW)

View through to kitchen from 'front-door'.

FROUJKE
APT: N-ROOM - TO KITCHEN END
(pic 6-94 / to WWS)

FROUJKE
APT: N-ROOM - CANDLE HOLDER
(pic 6-94 / to SW)

FROUJKE
APT: N-ROOM - MIRROR
(pic 6-94 / to N)

Froujke
made it from Silo sieve hung with her unsold jewelry.

FROUJKE
APT: N-ROOM - TO WINDOW END
(pic 6-94 / to EEN)

FROUJKE
APT: N-ROOM - CHILD'S PLATFORM
(pic 9-94 / to N)

The
raised child's platform and its steps is Diderik's: "for small people to look out".

On
the 2nd landing there are two apts (with separate entries but linked together
through a shared kitchen). There is also one of the
Silo's strangest 'environmental psycho-shocks', all the more nightmarish for its
location next to dwellings: an ordinary little brightly lit Vereniging office
with desk, pin-board, steel-locker, and a door one assumes is the office store-cupboard. Open this and at ones feet and before ones face is a huge
cavity crossed with platforms disappearing upwards into blackness, sometimes
raining from the dark above; an abandoned silo - crumbling and hollow: a
spatial/contextual lesion so unexpected I was precipitated on its brink into
rapidly cycling memories of fragments of dreams.

CENTRAL
STAIR: L2 LANDING - VERENIGING OFFICE
(pic
9-94 / to SW)

The
'office-cupboard' door which opens directly onto an empty silo's gulf is at the
rear corner.

(The
office is here in
a stripped state - I
have always regretted that I missed the opportunity to attempt to record
this crucial phenomenon.)

The
remains of a vertical bucket-conveyor (in 8 rectangular wooden tubes) passed
through the present work-space.

At
the entry-passage end is Ruud's metal-faced 'front-door'; the next (open)
door is the wc, next the bath-alcove, the nearest door is a sauna.

I
am standing in the living-room entry.

RUUD
APT: LIVING-ROOM WITH ENTRY PASSAGE
(pic 6-94 / to NE)

The
right-hand door is the entry-passage. At the far end is the kitchen: a
link-space between Ruud's and Ton's apts - shared with Ton.

RUUD
APT: LIVING-ROOM
(pic 9-94 / to S

RUUD
APT: LIVING-ROOM WITH KITCHEN ENTRY
(pic 6-94 / to N)

Beside
the stove is a window with steps: the exit to the Slurf terrace. At the far
end a door is open to the shared kitchen.

RUUD
APT: LIVING-ROOM WINDOW-EXIT TO SLURF-TERRACE
(pic 6-94 / to W)

Window exit to the terrace. Ruud's terrace is
supported on the transverse steel joists under the Slurf's roof.

RUUD
APT: SILO FACADE WITH FROM SLURF-TERRACE
(pic 6-94 / to NE)

Ruud's
living-room window-exit and stove chimney. The metal sheet on its left
supports a terminal for telephone(?) cables. The 3-windowed level above
(also with a stove chimney) is Osca's apt - alas never visited.

At
the far end is a door to Ton's living-room; in the wall on our right is the
door to Ruud's living-space.

.

TON APT (19##-) [L2- E-side]

TON
LIVING-ROOM
(pic
6-94 / to NNE)

Ton's
living-space is in the main Silo admin office.

At
the far left is the way to the (shared) kitchen.

TON
LIVING-ROOM BURNT
(pic
9-94 / to S)

An
accidental fire, started with a candle (in the newly built bed), was put out
(and the damage limited to this room) using the Central-Stair fire-hose
system installed by Diderik et al.

.

CLIMBING
THE STAIR ... cont

On
landing 3 there are two more apartments (not recorded or visited) and an 'artistically decorated' shared
WC: it's rusty cistern in a frame of golden squirming curls of extruded
polystyrene.

CENTRAL
STAIR: L3 LANDING
(pic
9-94 / to SW)

At
the E end of this landing [pic left] there are 7 steps down to metal door,
into a space (never visited, but possibly similar to the Vereniging office
on the level below: ref landing 2) used by Youri
for guests.

The
toothed bar is (I'm told) the remains of a vertical-conveyor(?) mechanism.

During
the
Silo's last phase Vilbjorg made paintings on the walls of this landing and
the one above.

CENTRAL
STAIR: L3 LANDING WC & SHOWER
(pic
9-94 / to S)

On
landing 3 a shared wc with 'art' adornments.

The
extruded-foam cistern-frame demonstrates a radical associational shift -
from rusty-urinal-fitting to sumptuous-decor - invoked by the minimal means
of a flippant doodle.

CLIMBING
THE STAIR ... cont

On level 4 a
different place begins - the end of domesticity is signalled by a huge and primitive
riveted-steel girder plunging diagonally from the outer wall up
through the floor of the "Museum" (bracing the latter's
ceiling-platform against the thrust of the 'Pyramid'). Here the character and position of everything begins to change: to go further one must enter a door
(once the anti-squatters' upper limit) into what has become a small lower lobby
to the weird "Museum". The open floor that once pertained here has
been enclosed (as a huge studio/store-room) behind a bizarre wall like the
facade of a miniature medieval house; its wooden frame made without nails, the
joints plugged and wedged, infilled with plastered wire-netting over
insulation foam; the inner face is nailed planks. Crammed in this little
ante-room to the wonders of the "Museum" are strange lesions of scale
and place: massive industrial steel, the 'model-street' facade, a uniquely
graceful wooden stair (of 19thC craft) sheltering the stink of a cats'lavatory;
all confined in the harsh gloom-glare of a neon tube and a fat modern plastic
sewer pipe's intermittent rushing gurgle.

This last strange
little wooden stair is our last climb to reach the great central Attic. This
stair is unique in the Silo as a craft-based yet purely
practical
object. Made within a society that equated leisure and the domestic with
useless aesthetic elaboration and expense, it is - however much it now seems 'craft-quaint'
and of domestic scale - obviously made, raw and utilitarian, for
workshop/industry.
The climb is steep and short and every step's unique hand-made
long-worn form caresses ones sense.